Do you as a parent write, aspire to write, or work from home in some other fashion? I posted an article today at my CrossConnect Media site that may interest you: Childcare Trades with Work-at-Home Moms.

Trading time with another creative mom gave me at least one quiet day a week to work, in exchange for another day I had fun playing with both kids. This was a lifesaver for me when my children were small and we also had a small budget!

When my daughter Aimee was a preschooler, she got along great with a little boy whose mom I learned was also a stay-at-home working mom. As we got to know each other, we realized that trading childcare would work out great for us both and for the kids too. We each got one free day of childcare a week and our kids were close friends until we had to move away.

Years later, my second daughter was about the same age and I deliberately sought out another work-at-home creative mom. By deliberately, I mean I began praying for a perfect fit! You can read more about how that prayer was answered at my post. Check that out, if you not only are a creative person who needs a bit of quiet work time but you also enjoy playing with kids.

A Circus for Big Kids (yes, even me!)

Last night I went to the circus, courtesy of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey (at Raleigh PNC Arena, Feb 4-8, 2015). I was delighted to go but also confess to some initial skepticism. Past circus experiences (with other companies) attended when my kids were small were rather hokey and seedy, with overabundance of cleavage and under-abundance of impressive acts. I recalled battles over buying expensive whirling and flashing toys that vendors continually waved before my preschooler’s eyes. But hey, I couldn’t pass up a night out with hubby, my teen daughter and her boyfriend — and at least they wouldn’t beg for whirling toys.

It turns out, the show was amazing. We were really all quite stunned by the high level of athleticism. My teen daughter must have said “Whaaaat?!” a dozen times, since as an athlete herself (runner, and a former stunt cheerleader with a flair for flying) she knew how difficult the stunts were. Here’s a taste of what we saw:

We raved at the high level of athleticism among the performers. Athletic older kids, teens and adults can appreciate the work and skill involved in the acrobatic stunts! The performers from various countries offered great variety in their acts.

Amazing Acrobatics

The China National Acrobatic Troupe did stunts on bikes, poles, through stacked circles, and while juggling; the Tuniziani Troupe trapeze athletics amazed us with triple flips and seeming near misses with the ceiling of the arena. Paulo dos Santos, who at first sight was seen as a sidekick to the ringmaster and clowning around that sometimes emphasized his little person stature, ended up amazing the crowd throughout the evening with his own intense athleticism. Paulo is skilled in the art of Capoeira, (martial arts, dance moves and acrobatics) extremely popular in Brazil. His wife and three children are currently accompanying him on the Legend circuit.

If you see the video below you can get a taste of the acrobatics. (Note, the hanging-hair stunts mentioned in the video were not done last night, most likely due to an accident at a previous event that injured performers.)

Animal Stunts

The Cossack Riders took horseback riding to the limit with jumps on and off — and crawling under and around — galloping horses. It was quite jaw-dropping.

Lion and tiger tamer Alexander looked as if he might be eaten alive at any moment, surrounded in a netted area by 8-10 tigers and lions — I lost count — until one rolled over for a belly rub. Yet even when several lions kissed him, I couldn’t help but think nervously of Siegfried and Roy (which didn’t turn out so great for Roy). If curious about how a lion tamer gets his start, read about Alexander Lacey whose family “raised more than 11 generations of lions and nine generations of tigers”. Regarding the cats in his own show, Alexander says, “Along with their mothers, we’ve helped raise them since birth. These cats are truly a part of my family.”

The canines of Hans and Maria Klose and were fun to watch, as they eagerly jumped through challenges (apparently in great anticipation of hot dogs!) There were other performing animals as well, including the elephants, llamas, and even barnyard animals in the mix. (See Ringling’s Animal Care Web Links. )

Motorcycle Stunts

The Torres Family from Paraguay wowed us on eight motorcycles zooming around inside a 16-foot steel globe. It was amazing enough with four, and they kept adding more to the mix. They describe their technique inside the globe as “very much like what pilots do in an air show.”

According to ringling.com,”Blowing a whistle and revving their engines to cue one another, each rider embarks upon a set pattern. Once the riders are in motion, maintaining constant speeds (which can reach up to 65 miles per hour) and the distance from one another is critical. Still, when they are inside the globe they are completely focused on where everyone else is and are making constant, micro-second adjustments.”

Johnathan Lee Iverson and Paulo dos Santos

Even ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson has a story. At age 11 he performed with the world-famous Boys Choir of Harlem, then later was trained classical, jazz, hip hop, and gospel music. He graduated with a degree in voice performance and was named by Barbara Walters one of the ten most fascinating people in 1999. He has also has performed in off-Broadway productions and acted in various commercials, plus does voice-overs.

A Family friendly show?

This definitely was a family friendly show (with very tasteful costumes) although the ticket expense for children is likely to be a bit prohibitive for families on a budget. If you do take kids, eat first, including sweets if you don’t want them to beg for $15 cotton candy! (Ouch.)

But quite frankly, I think small children are less likely to appreciate the complexity of the athleticism in the performers. I imagine some parents took tired kids home at half-time, missing some of the amazing stunts in the second half, although the first half had plenty of athletic action. A comment I overheard in a ladies’ room stall pretty much said it:

Five-year-old Renae sighed and then exclaimed, “I’m thankful that Tyrannosaurus rex is extinct.”

Our family broke out in laughter at her response. Several weeks before, we had observed full-size dinosaur replicas at the science center. After viewing these giants, Renae was relieved to learn she couldn’t be crushed beneath monstrous dinosaur feet because they no longer tromped the earth. Whew!

When I think of Renae’s response, I, too, am thankful that I haven’t had to face many of the gigantic disasters I often hear about. I have not successfully avoided them all. Difficult circumstances such as unemployment, serious illness, or the death of a loved one can seem like Tyrannosaurus rex, seeking to shake our faith and stomp out our joy.

I wish adversity were extinct, but I’ve learned I can live through it by praying for protection and strength. I’ve also learned I need to thank family and friends who embrace me when I’m fatigued, and to thank God, who uses difficult times to teach me to trust him.

Note from Laurie: This book would make a fun Christmas gift or Mother’s Day gift for a parent or grandparent. Inside the book, you’ll see my endorsement: “Using poignant and humorous quotes from children to teach spiritual truths is both unique and clever. Growing Toward God is a fun and insightful read!” So . . . can you tell I’m a fan?

How to help brothers and sisters connect through shared memories to build strong sibling relationships.

Image purchased from iStockphoto

It’s become a passion and priority of mine to help nurture my kids’ relationships with each other. It often has not been easy, but has always been worthwhile! Now at ages 28 (boy), 23 (girl), and 17(girl) I see their closeness and feel I’ve done at least one thing right.

To be honest, it has taken determination and even financial cost to help them draw and stay close, especially as young adults. But I realized when my kids were small that one way to help create strong relationships between them was to make sure they were part of each others’ special events in life. Whatever was special to that child, or teen, or young adult would be attended, if at all possible, by the other siblings. I wanted to help them build memories of each other’s successes, so that when they experienced failures or struggles they would turn to each other then, too.

It pains me to think of special events and even crises I missed with my own siblings. I either didn’t hear about them, couldn’t get there, or was too self-preoccupied. My biggest heartbreak was not getting to be at my own father’s funeral with the rest of the family as I was delivering my first child that week, so forbidden to fly. There were multiple practical reasons for our drifting apart: gender, age, personality differences and moving away to school/work. Much separation can occur naturally, unless parents are determined to curtail that drift somehow.

I became determined when I became a parent myself to make special efforts to glue our kids together through shared critical memories, sometimes whether they liked it or not. Don’t like to watch wrestling or listening to violins? Tough. Be there to support your sibling. I didn’t force all events, but made sure they were there for at least some, to create shared memories.

That has often meant setting aside funds specifically for family events and coordinating calendars like a ninja. And sometimes firmly telling school officials or coaches our kids would miss school events to be at critical sibling events. I actually laughed when a cheerleading coach complained when our youngest missed practices to attend her sister’s wedding. But most were supportive and highly respectful of our nurturing our kids’ relationships.

Here are a few ways we’ve nurtured our kids in recent years:

Flew the family from IA to RI to our eldest son’s graduation from naval officer candidate school, and took our youngest out of school & sports practices for a few days for that purpose.

Bought an airline ticket for our teen to do a 3-way trip this past summer to see her brother in CA, and sister in WA.

Timed it just right so brother and sister could run a half marathon together.

Flew our middle daughter from WA to CA show she could see her brother before deployment and the two of them could visit grandparents together. Brother used his own airline mileage to get his sister there.

Practically speaking, we’ve had to budget for some things by pinching pennies in other ways. We have always bought used cars — and kept them forever — to have at least a small travel budget. We pay for big items (home repairs, etc.) with cards that get us airline miles. We eat out less when we want to save for more important things. And if travel is not affordable, there is always Skype: for free.

Also free and easy is continually encouraging communication. “You might give your sister a call, she’s having a rough time.” “Sister is in a race right now with a live video feed! Here’s the link!” “Brother will be packing up, this is a great time to give him a call.” But what I love now is when I make suggestions like that they are have often already talked or texted each other.

For those of you with multiple little ones, it may seem a no-brainer keeping your kids close. They are always together anyway, either playing or fussing and fuming. Where you go, they all go.

But at some point they grow up. Brothers and sisters with the most distance between ages can naturally grow apart. Older ones leave home for college and careers, younger ones are left behind. Right now they may fight like cats and dogs and you wonder if they will ever get along. But as teens and young adults, they will have fresh opportunities to draw close to each other.

I can’t tell you how many times I told my kids this (especially when they were fighting): “Friends will come and go — but you will have your siblings for each others’ lifetimes. Cherish that.” Sometimes they said, “Yeah, right.” As young adults they all get it.

Early specialization in sports? Not for this family.

by Laurie Winslow Sargent

Back when my kids were ages 11, 17, and 22, I wrote an article called Encouraging Young Athletes — on discouraging early specialization — for Cedar Valley Athlete magazine. Now that my 11-year-old is a teen athlete, I’m glad for choices I made for her back then.

Until I had my third child, I was a semi-sports parent.

Semi, because although my two eldest were involved in multiple sports, those sports were school or city sponsored, seasonal, inexpensive, and close to home. We still had plenty of time for family fun, including sailing, hiking, and vacations. Our children were able to explore non-sports interests too.

Between preschool and high school Kid One (boy) was on soccer, basketball, football, and wrestling teams. In college he enjoyed rugby, scuba diving, skiing, and weight-lifting. Kid Two (girl) played soccer and basketball, swam, and ran cross-country. Both, now young adults, are committed to physical fitness and enjoy running, hiking, and other recreational sports.

Kid Three (girl), however, pushed me into a whole new athletic realm, with far more decisions to make — with time and finances.

Raising an Athletic Child (Whew!)

Her athletic inclinations were noticeable — no kidding — at about ten months old. As a toddler all her first words were verbs (run, jump, swing). As a young preschooler, she was always planning physically precise movements. She became very upset when I moved the ottoman, because she had invented a headstand-flip routine with it. At city parks other parents looked on with horror as my 3-4 year old scrambled up full-sized play equipment while I looked on nonchalantly, as she’d done it since about 16 months old (well, yeah, that gave me a heart attack too). At age five or six she challenged my husband’s weight lifting gym members to a pull-up contest (hilarious).

Parental Pressures for Specialization

By the time she was 11, parents and coaches were chastising me: “You should get her on a team.” (Meaning: an expensive club team with year-round commitments.) You should, you should, you should. No matter what sport she played, it was always implied that if I didn’t get on the ball and be a real sports parent, I’d be wasting my kid’s talent and ability to play competitively in her teen and college years.

YIKES! Was that possible? My gut said no. At first I even resisted locking her into any classes or teams at all. We had so many fabulous parks to explore. When she did finally join teams, I wanted to her challenged but still to have fun simply playing without pressure, specialization, or year-round sports. I also wanted to use family funds for family fun as much as possible. Upward basketball at our church was fun, and mountain hiking was still a family favorite.

At that time I felt very affirmed by the book Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports. The author, Regan McMahon (journalist and mother of two athletic kids) addressed concerns experienced by parents of young athletes: loss of family time, pressure to join costly clubs (with “potential”, but rare, scholarships as lures); loss of children’s opportunities and time to explore other interests; kid stress; and competitive use injuries. McMahon offered practical advice as well.

Now – fast-forward — Kid Three is an 11th grade teen athlete. Through middle and high school she has enjoyed basketball, competitive cheer, track and now cross-country, all courtesy of her public schools. The closest I’ve come to being a real sports parent has been needing to manage far more sports/games/meets in a year than Kid One or Kid Two ever wanted. It’s also been more important to Kid Three for us to be present at as many sports events as possible, and travel farther, but we are pleased to oblige and support her. It just means I fill my calendar first with sports obligations — then work around them.

My Teen Athlete’s Own Choices

This past fall of her junior year in high school, my daughter has finally chosen, to specialize: in running, at least for a while. That was a tough choice for her, having competed nationally with cheer as a flyer. However, now she’s experienced ever-increasing opportunities to run cross-country and track at very competitive invitational levels, which has been very exciting, including a national meet in Manhattan this past weekend.

This has given me confidence that I made right decisions for her in avoiding early specialization in sports. As she runs increasingly competitively, it does add some stress for her that could have so easily discouraged her at a young age. Also, income that could have been spent on club sports for her instead helped Kids One and Two through college and should help Kid Three as well. Any scholarships on the horizon? If so, that will be a bonus and of course, very welcome! But I’m so glad I didn’t spend my child’s elementary school years pushing her to pursue that, and allowed plenty of time for her to enjoy childhood and the sheer love of sports.

There’s a new great book out called The Real Story of a High School Coach which I’m delighted to see affirms my choices. A teacher and coach of baseball and cross-country, the author,Michael Miragliuolo has led many high school teams to championships, and many of his athletes have gone been awarded college sports scholarships. He grew his cross-country team in an unusual way from 25 runners to over 200, so was featured in USA Today. We also happen to be thrilled that he is my daughter’s head coach. That’s how I found the book. Yet I nodded in agreement while turning the pages, as his views on early specialization in sports are vehement and mirror my own. Then I noticed he’d included a photo of my daughter’s 2013 state winning cross-country team — an unexpected, fun surprise!

My youngest child-now-teen’s trademark has been the way she’s always grinned while playing sports. Coaches and teammates have consistently commented on that. That’s because her participation has been for the joy of it. Yes, she’s always been competitive and at times very serious. But there has always been joy underlying her sports choices. A basketball referee once joked that her smile was blinding him. When her grins turned to grimaces when playing that particular sport, she was done with it.

As long as she can run and still enjoy it, I’m right behind her. (Well, not right behind — she leaves me in the dust.) But it will remain her choice. We will both know when the smiles stop that it will be time for a change. For now, she’s running and grinning.

A final note: no sport will be fun all the time, of course. My daughter has run track for five years, and now cross-country, through rain, snow, and sleet (even when the mailman wouldn’t). She’s experienced aches and pains, and many emotional highs and lows with team successes and struggles. It’s her dedication, competitiveness, and underlying joy for the sport that keeps her going, encouraging others along the way.

With the glut of toys on the market, how can you choose the best toys for your child? Look for these 7 key features.

In my mind, the best toys or games are safe, plus have several or all of the following features related to play value:

Can be played with in a variety of ways and stimulate some imagination

Teach more than one skill

Appeal to several age groups

Encourage positive behavior and learning

Are fun (for the child—and hopefully for the parent, too)

Get frequent, long-term use and stimulate interest in independent play

Offer a window into what the child is thinking or feeling

Toys that don’t meet many of these qualifications can be a waste of money and do little but create clutter in your home.

I’m big on what toys teach, partly due to my previous experience working as a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) in public schools, including one Birth-to-Three program. But I’m also a huge fan of helping kids learn through toys because I did just that with my own three kids. (My middle daughter is now a teacher in early childhood education.)

I used to write toy reviews for the former Christian Parenting Today magazine. Toy manufacturers (including Fisher-Price® and PlaySkool) sent me boxes of play materials to evaluate. That made me think more deeply about what was worth occupying space in my own kids’ rooms and what I could justifiably recommend to my 250,000 readers.

Once when the UPS man delivered a huge box of toys for me to review, the neighbor kids were gathered in my yard. Reviewing the toys became a group project. One thumbs-down preschool toy was designed so poorly it made us all laugh. A catapult was supposed to launch plastic treats (with numbers on them) into a creature’s plastic mouth. Theoretically, it was designed to teach child recognition of the numbers one through five. Realistically, correctly loading and launching the catapult required the motor skills of a child who could count to fifty. Of course my creative crowd found other things to launch with the toy until the catapult fell off.

A much better toy, one that all three of my children loved, was a set of Measure Up Cups, which can be used to “dump, fill, nest, stack and stamp. These volumetrically correct, sequentially numbered cups introduce important preschool concepts related to volume, size, time, color and measurement.”

The toy is described as appropriate for children from 12 months through primary school, but an infant can also play with the larger cups. That means the toy can be played with by the same child for four to five years–and my kids did.

Hide objects under the cups, then reveal them. This can teach a baby object permanence, but also can be fun for illusion tricks with preschoolers.

Touch and feel numbers with your eyes closed, inside the cup on the bottom.

Identify animals on the bottoms of the cups with your baby.

Stamp the animal designs into dough or wet sand with your preschooler. Point out to your child that the designs grow progressively larger as the cups increase in size.

Trace around the cups and then match the cups to the right sized circles.

Practice telling time with your preschooler: the designs on the outside of the cups correspond to clock face positions–another new feature.

As a recap, to choose the best toys for your children, look for ones that can be played with in many ways, stimulate creativity and imagination, teach more than one skill to more than one age group, and make learning fun. The best toys will be used often and your child will enjoy playing with them by himself but also with you. Great toys can actually make parenting more exciting, when through parent-child play you see your child thinking, learning new skills and reaching new milestones.

When child #3 wanted to play Candy Land, my eyes glazed over at the thought of playing that preschool game for the umpteenth time.

Then I found two ways to spice up the fun.

Tyler and Aimee had already worn out our first game box. It had fallen apart at the seams, and the brightly colored cards were bent and faded. As I had thrown it away, I’d muttered aloud that Elisa (then three) could surely live without it, couldn’t she?

Do you know that Candy Land was introduced in 1949, created by a woman in San Diego California who wanted to entertain children afflicted with polio? See The History of Candy Land.

I reluctantly bought a fresh game for Elisa for Christmas.

Once again I found myself impatiently drumming my fingers on the board with the rainbow-colored trail, desperately hoping for a Queen Frostine card so I could race to the end and out of candy country. I’d already tried my trick of stacking the deck–putting the picture cards in the top one-third. But Elisa was getting the good ones, and I the duds.

What is it, I wondered, that makes this game so appealing to kids? The image of a sweet fantasyland is no doubt a big draw. Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory had similar appeal.

Candy Land makes preschoolers feel quite clever playing board game like their big siblings, Mom and Dad. It excites them to recognize colors and practice counting skills. And there’s the suspense: Will the next card send you all the way back to Plumpy, to start all over again?

For me, suspense had long ago given way to yawns. I decided to try a new version. At first this meant our little gingerbread place markers, when passing each other on the board, shook their plastic hand and had very fine, squeaky conversations with each other.

Then I invented Color-I-Spy. While playing the game, when drawing a new card we would also do this: find an object in the room containing the matching color–no repeating objects. (For purple and orange we looked on CD covers.)

This turned out to be a great way to play a table game with a wiggly child. Cruising the room for matching objects requires movement and imagination. It also offered vocabulary building: “Look, Mom! There’s some red on that globe in South America!”

A preschooler always learns a whole lot more from a table game than you know–how to sequence, match colors, count spaces, etc. In fact, any game is fun for parents to play when we pay attention to our child’s developmental milestones–perhaps with round one of the game your child can’t yet count spaces, and the next he can.

But also stimulating his imagination makes playing more fun. And it doesn’t hurt that it will make it a whole lot more fun–after endless repetitions of the game — for Mom (or Dad, or Grandma) too!

See this adorable video review of Candy Land: My 4-year-old’s favorite game. It really makes me miss it now and look forward to playing it as a Grandma someday!

When I hear “Free at last!” in the rousing speech by Martin Luther King, I admit I don’t think only of that inspiring pastor and the human rights movement.

I also think of my daughter Aimee’s 3rd birthday.

♥

Back in the ’90’s when Aimee was two and her older brother six, one of our favorite CDs was by the group DC Talk.

Our church was less than a mile away from home in our tiny town of South Bend, Washington. But if on the way home a song we liked was blaring out our speakers, my husband would drive up and around hills and through neighborhoods as we all loudly sang along.

This also involved a lot of posturing and what I called “finger and head dancing”. (There is only so much you can do when strapped into a car seat.)

Our favorite song was Free at Last. It had a humorous off-key opening (which can most likely be heard in any small church congregation) and the “free at last” passage from Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech. Most of the song was upbeat Christian rap, featuring the singer known now as TobyMac. Our car rides were so much fun (we also danced crazily with the kids in our living room) that the song Free at Last became a family favorite.

So of course when we realized that at that age Aimee counted this way—one, two, free, four—I couldn’t resist putting up the sign (see image above) on her birthday, when she was finally “free at last!”

The only thing missing from this video is better sound quality, and the car-dancing Sargent family:

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Books written by Laurie Winslow Sargent include The Power of Parent-Child Play and Delight in Your Child's Design.